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Bolin: A Misplaced Nostalgic Saturday

Sports eras bygone always seem better retrospectively than they actually were at the time. We’re all guilty of it in some fashion. “Glory Days,” they’re called.

Shame, shame.

Saturday in the sports landscape was straight out of the textbook. The history textbook.

The famed Kentucky Derby gave us the first look at a horse the experts say has the best chance at the Triple Crown in maybe 20 years. Seven hours later, Floyd Mayweather gave us another great rendition of his always brilliant pugilism.

Boxing and horse racing. Apparently we woke up in 1940 on Saturday morning.

Both sports are unfairly maligned in this day and age. One – boxing – because of supposed cheating and match-fixing. The other has simply become stale with no appeal to anyone but the degenerates and the elite, supposedly.

Fifty years ago, the two sports were king. But were they really that much better then?

I’m not 50, so I can’t say with any certainty. What is fact, however, is the death of both is not yet upon us. Saturday proved it.

Casual sports fans watch the Kentucky Derby. They’re not tuning in for the umpteen hours of pre-race coverage – I mean, what is it, the Super Bowl? – but they’ll flip the channel back and forth to make sure they catch the fastest two minutes in sports. A college friend of mine who lives in Louisville has gone the last two years with his wife. They’re not exactly the target horse racing market. He’s from greater Philadelphia. She’s from Chicago. They lived in Manhattan before moving to Kentucky. He’s an attorney in the Army. She’s a doctor. They’re black.

The last note I wouldn’t mention had Kevin Krigger, the jockey who rode Goldencents, had not predicted — to some clamor — he would become the first black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby since 1902.

He didn’t, of course. But he made waves with his bold proclamation in a sport where prim and proper isn’t just for the attire. Good for him and good for the sport. The falsity that American horse racing is only for well-to-do elites and members of Gamblers Anonymous needs breaking.

Boxing seems to have the opposite problem.

Mixed martial arts has poached a few boxing fans, but more importantly, it’s captured the imagination of the casual crowd. There are no Muhammad Alis, no Ray Leonards, no Mike Tysons in boxing, they say. No, now we have Jon “Bones” Jones and Benson “Smooth” Henderson. Names sure to resonate in 50 years, certainly.

There’s the rub. The public’s bloodlust has only increased in the last 20 years, yet the sport is supposedly on its deathbed. It’s imploded upon itself. Questions whether bouts are on the up-and-up have always plagued the sport. But the alphabet soup that is sanctioning bodies, organizers, promoters and title names has become too much for the casual fan to digest.

Floyd Mayweather may well be the best boxer since Leonard. Adrian Broner is perhaps the best young American since Tyson and Sergio Martinez a middleweight worthy of Marvin Hagler.

So it’s been 111 years since a black jockey has won the Kentucky Derby and 30 years since we’ve seen a fighter of Mayweather’s caliber. And these sports were better in yesteryear? Pish posh.

There are no excuses for either. Both have played a significant role in their own undoing. But if you are a fan of sport, game or competition, it’s incumbent you not cast out the here and now, lest you become a character in a Bruce Springsteen song pining for days that have passed by you.